Saturday, December 26, 2009

An old relic on Geddes Terrace?

This may not look like much, and I've passed it by tons of times while heading along Geddes Terrace, both as a nipper in Primary School and now. Today, it appears to be just part of the boarding house facilities packed onto a narrow site between Great North Road and Avondale.

Something this past week, though, made me pause, and take another look at the tongue-and-groove exterior, the way it has obviously been altered and reused over the years. And I recalled something sent through to the Avondale-Waterview Historical Society for our files quite a few years ago ...

You see, this is the back of the old Avondale Police Station, a complex of three buildings completed in 1906, comprising constable's residence ansd office, a lock-up gaol, and stable. I'll have a look at the Council files (they only go back to 1927, but that'll do) to see just what this wee building might really have been, (1940 aerials indicate the building was there then) but -- it reminds me a lot of the blueprint for the stable, above. If so, altered or not -- it would be Avondale's oldest surviving stable which we'd be able to date. The fact that a large garage-style door is at the end lends some support to the idea that it could have been a stable.

A bloke backing his car out of the carpark beside the building that day asked if I was looking for someone. I explained that the building reminded me considerably of the old gaol and stable buildings, and that I was just a history buff, wondering if I've come across more history. I tend to do that kind of thing -- stop dead, on a footpath, and wonder.

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"He that would know what shall be, must consider what hath been." -- H.G. Bohn, Handbook of Proverbs, 1855.

"...here's the beginning. Everything needs a beginning, otherwise we'd all start in the middle and get terribly confused by the end." -- Timespanner, 20 September 2008

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